“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.”
Henry David Thoreau
Image generated with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot
Imagine That!
One of the strangest things about being human is that we can suffer over things that aren’t real. We cry at the death of a character in a novel, even though we know they never lived. We lie awake at night rehearsing arguments we’ll never have, with people who aren’t in the room. We fall in love with an imagined future and grieve when life turns out otherwise. No other creature does this. A dog doesn’t weep at the idea of not going on that cruise advertised on TV. A robin doesn’t dream of flying to the moon.
But we do. We live in the what if, the maybe, the someday. We are builders of castles in the air—and mourners when they collapse.
It’s a strange gift. Our imagination gives us art, poetry, worship, science fiction, hope. I recall doing my master’s in creative writing and specialising in essays. One of my tutor marked assignments got me an incredibly high mark and the essay just fell out of my imagination just like that. Many writers and songwriters have had similar experiences. It seems the imagination can produce the goods when one concentrates.
I recall trying to memorise the periodic table and after two hours it was done. I just too an imaginary road trip and related certain elements to the places I passed.
In our imagination we build cathedrals, write symphonies, and spark revolutions. It lets us long for justice and picture peace before either exists. But it also burdens us with fear. We panic over possible diagnoses before the test results are in. We hold grudges for things never said but fully imagined. We construct entire identities around old wounds, building echo chambers in our heads where the past is always speaking.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live like the sparrow in the hedge, responding only to what is. No dread of the future. No mourning of the past. No mental reruns. Just now—the glint of the sun, the rustle of a leaf, the instinct to fly.
But that’s not the life we were given. Instead, we are creatures of memory and forethought, bound by what was and drawn forward by what might be. Our pain often comes not from what has happened, but from what we think could happen—or should have.
And yet… our greatest joys come from the same place. The hope of reconciliation. The dream of a better world. The sense that something greater lies beyond what we see.
That’s the paradox: we are the only species that suffers from imagination, and the only one saved by it.
We imagine God. Eternity. A new beginning. These are not mere illusions. They are signposts, suggesting that we are made for more than mud and molecules. The ache for something beyond may be the best evidence that we are meant for something beyond.
It is strange to be human. Strange and beautiful. We are haunted by the unreal yet often healed by it too. Our minds are theatres, sanctuaries, and sometimes prisons. But even in our darkest thoughts, a flicker of light persists: the ability to imagine a way out. A way forward. A way home.
Rather, as it is written:
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no heart has imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
But God has revealed it to us by the Spirit.
Ephesians I:9,10. BSB.